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Ambiguity Resolution in Passivized Idioms: Is There a Shift in the Most Likely Interpretation? (2022)
Journal Article
Kyriacou, M., Conklin, K., & Thompson, D. (2023). Ambiguity Resolution in Passivized Idioms: Is There a Shift in the Most Likely Interpretation?. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 77(3), 212–226. https://doi.org/10.1037/cep0000300

Ambiguous but canonical idioms (kick the bucket) are processed fast in both their figurative (“die”) and literal (“boot the pail”) senses, although processing costs associated with meaning integration may emerge in postidiom regions. Modified version... Read More about Ambiguity Resolution in Passivized Idioms: Is There a Shift in the Most Likely Interpretation?.

When the Idiom Advantage Comes Up Short: Eye-Tracking Canonical and Modified Idioms (2021)
Journal Article
Kyriacou, M., Conklin, K., & Thompson, D. (2021). When the Idiom Advantage Comes Up Short: Eye-Tracking Canonical and Modified Idioms. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, Article 675046. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.675046

The literature on idioms often talks about an ‘idiom advantage’, such that familiar idioms (spill the beans) are generally processed faster than comparable literal phrases (burn the beans). More recently, researchers have explored the processing of i... Read More about When the Idiom Advantage Comes Up Short: Eye-Tracking Canonical and Modified Idioms.

Passivizability of Idioms: Has the Wrong Tree Been Barked Up? (2019)
Journal Article
Kyriacou, M., Conklin, K., & Thompson, D. (2020). Passivizability of Idioms: Has the Wrong Tree Been Barked Up?. Language and Speech, 63(2), 404-435. https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830919847691

A growing number of studies support the partial compositionality of idiomatic phrases, while idioms are thought to vary in their syntactic flexibility. Some idioms, like kick the bucket, have been classified as inflexible and incapable of being passi... Read More about Passivizability of Idioms: Has the Wrong Tree Been Barked Up?.